Want to Boost your Email Click Through Rate by 400%?

I made a few essential changes, and my email click through rate saw a 400% hike! Honestly, a 400% hike!

I’m ecstatic about my success, and I promise at the end of this blog to share my email click through rate improvement techniques.

Let’s start with the basics and understand what click through rate means.

What is Email Click Through Rate?

Email click through rate (CTR) is the percentage of email recipients who interact with one or more links contained in an email you send. Tracking the CTR helps you determine the performance of individual emails. CTR gives you direct insight into how many people on your email list are engaging with your content and interested in learning more about your brand or your offer. It can also be used to calculate the results of A/B tests.

It is important to note that CTRs vary according to the industry.

How to calculate CTR?

There is a constant dispute between the use of total clicks and unique clicks when calculating the CTR. For me, that is up to your preference. You first decide the purpose of calculating the CTR which then determines whether you use total clicks or unique clicks. Let me show you how.

What Is the Difference Between Total Clicks and Unique Clicks?

Total clicks are the total number of times the embedded URL was clicked. On the other hand, unique clicks represent the number of subscribers clicking on your embedded links. For example, you receive an email with a link to two separate blogs. You click the first link twice and click the second link once. Your total clicks count will be three but your unique links count will be two.

So, if the purpose of tracking the CTR is to know the number of people who read the blogs, then the best option is to use unique clicks to calculate CTR. If you want to know how popular your email was or how many times people found it clickable, use total clicks to calculate the CTR.

Getting back to the promise I made at the beginning of this blog, let me share the techniques I used to catapult my CTR.

What Affects the CTR?

The two most important aspects of an email are the subject line and email body content. If your subject lines are catchy and relevant, recipients are much more likely to open emails. Captivating and unusual subject lines increase your open rates. If your email body content is impressive, recipients will read your emails and click on the embedded links.

So, here are the seven things you must do to create a likable email with fantastic body content. Let’s make sure people read your emails!

7 Steps to follow for Engaging Email Body Content

#1 Format the Content

Pay attention to your email formatting if you don’t want people abandoning it unread. If your email content is long, add sub-headings, and break it down into small paragraphs. Recipients must be able to scan through the content and get the gist.

#2 Do Not Put Important Information in Images

Avoid planting important information within images. It may seem tempting, and you may be so confident that planting your message in an image is worth it, but it’s not. Many email providers have a default setting that blocks images from appearing in emails. In those cases, your recipients will lose valuable information.

#3 Make your Content Interactive

People like to know facts and numbers, see animated Gifs, or get a subscriber bonus. In fact, they even like giving feedback. These tactics help you impress the recipients in a short time. Adding videos to emails is also a trend you should consider for your future email campaigns. You can even add social sharing buttons. People like feeling that it’s a two-way communication and you are not just dumping information in their inboxes.

#4 Segment Your Audience Recipients

Every recipient is different. Not everyone is interested in everything. So, try and segment your audience based on their past actions and preferences. Discover what interests them and put that in front of them. Tailor the message as much as possible towards the particular recipient’s interests and pain points. For example, if you’re emailing leads generated from Pinterest, they are more inclined towards visual content. But if your audience for a particular email is business executives, they prefer plain text divided by subheadings and bullet points. The more targeted the message, the higher your CTR.

#5 Provide a Clear CTA

One single, clear CTA will also lead to more clicks. Placement of the CTA button also decides whether or not the recipient will click. A/B testing is the best way to find out which CTA and placement work best for your subscribers. There is one guiding principle for online marketing success we want you to know. You just have to click here and read.

#6 Master the Timing of when you Send Emails

Another influential factor is the timing of emails. If you are sending emails when people are busy, they won’t ever open it.

There is no golden rule for perfect timings. Email delivery timing is an art. You must test email times to find the right timing. You can send emails at different timings and check which timing received the most open rates and click through rates. Your email marketing tools can help you get this data/insight.

A study by Spaceship shows that the best time to send out emails is 8 PM to midnight. (Source)

Therefore, the competition is much lower if you send your emails between 8 PM to midnight. Show formThis is one tip or one way of looking at delivery timing options. You should not jump to a conclusion without experimenting with your own emails. Schedule emails to be sent throughout the day and keep track of the open rate. You may learn that your email list prefers hearing from you outside of the typical workday.

#7 Optimize Emails for Mobile Devices

And last but not least, your email must be mobile-friendly.

54% of email is now opened on a mobile device. This means that more emails are read on mobile devices than on desktop. (Source)

So, emails that are not optimized for mobile devices will be abandoned. You have a second or two to help people determine whether or not they will read the email or bounce.

Conclusion

Every email recipient makes a judgment when they receive your email. They may feel:

‘Oh my gosh! I can’t wait to read that email!’

OR

‘Oh my gosh! I am going to unsubscribe from that list today!’

Which feeling do your recipients get? Unfortunately, if it is the second feeling, you need to change. Luckily you now have seven steps to help you with your email click through rate.